Chapter 2: Accidental Discoveries
This is the second chapter in the MTH installation. Description Things are changing on Aegis VII as Zach starts having nightmarish dreams, some kind of "magical" discovery was made, and everyone is called in for some kind of debriefing and change of plans. Whatever this discovery is, it changed everything. Story Light started to fill Zach's vision. It was extremely bright and harsh, he wasn't sure where it was coming from as it wasn't his room light. He tried to focus his vision or shield himself from the light, but nothing worked. Nothing was changing, it was just bright and it hurt. Was he blind? He was beginning to panic at the thought of this when suddenly his vision changed. Now he understood why the light was so harsh, he was surrounded by snow across a completely frozen landscape. This only served to further his confusion though, as Aegis VII was definitely cold, but it was devoid of anything like snow. He tried to get a bearing on his surroundings, but no matter how much he turned he couldn't find a single point that looked any different from the last. Suddenly there was a bright flash of light and everything changed again. No longer was Zach in a frozen wasteland, but in some kind of snowy mountain range. He looked at this time there was definitely scenery. Around him stood several mountains and there were even various buildings around them. He couldn't seem to move to be able to get closer to them, but he could tell they were made of metal and seemed to have some kind of lettering on it. Though he couldn't make out much, he could make out the first two letters "S.C." while the other remaining letters seem to have been worn off from the weather. The first thing he thought of were the Sovereign Colonies but that was impossible, those were hundreds of years old. Just as he thought the other letters were becoming visible there was a sudden burst of red light. Again Zach's surroundings changed, this time he was in some kind of alien looking facility. He appeared to be in the center of the room but wasn't really able to tell as it was extremely vast. Around him were 8 walkways without any kind of support, suspended over an endless void, stretching out for hundreds maybe even thousands of feet. At the edge of these walkways were platforms much like his and in the middle of them were giant monoliths. Judging based on their size and distance, these monoliths must've been hundreds of feet tall and at least a hundred feet wide at the base. The monoliths seemed to have two parts to it and these parts twisted and contorted around each other as they spiraled to the top, where the tips had extremely thinned out and almost touched. The monoliths also had some kind of weird markings on them. Scattered all over these objects were various markings which almost seemed like some kind of calligraphy. The symbols seemed to have no meaning to their shape or placement and yet at the same time, it was like each symbol was in its spot for a specific reason. As he took in this strangeness he noticed that despite the monoliths extreme similarities, no two were even close to being the same. Not only that but they glowed, almost pulsing as if they were transmitting or receiving something. Zach tried to take a step forward, hoping to get a better glance at even just one of them before he noticed he was standing on the edge of a cliff. Zach tried to scream but failed as he hurtled down the cliff. There was no ground and when he managed to look back from he had follow there was no clear indication of a top anymore either. He panicked as he hadn't the slightest inkling as of what to do, where he was, or what the hell was going on. It seemed like an eternity that he fell before he crashed into the ground. Stunned he wasn't hurt, he slowly got up and took in his surroundings again. He was in some kind of enclosure. It was entirely made of metal and was hundreds of feet in diameter. The walls were dozens of feet high and were completely void of anything. There were no weld lines, no rivets holding it together, not even any footholds, ladders, or even markings. As he threw his gaze from one side to the other he noticed various cages above him, slowly dripping what appeared to be blood. It was then that he decided to look down at where he had fallen and noticed that most of the snow around him was soaked with blood. Before the shock could overtake him however there was a horrible screech of rusted metal grinding against rusted metal and he noticed the cages were opening from the bottoms. It was at this moment that Zach realized he was in an arena of sorts. Bodies fell from the cages and he readied himself to fight despite not being ready for what he may face. What he saw next was far more horrible than anything he could've imagined. A human stumbled to his feet from one of the cages before screaming, pleading and begging for his life or to at least be granted a working weapon to deal with what he called "the Devil's army." A booming voice replied but Zach couldn't make out the words, but noticed that something was thrown over the walls. The human rushed over to pick up what Zach assumed was a weapon when he noticed a dark flash to his right. It hit Zach that there was something else in the other cage and whatever it was was now upon this poor fellow in front of him. It what appeared to be no more than a slap or some kind of awkward right hook, this creature tore off the man's leg from about the middle of the shin down. The man's wailed pierced through the otherwise completely silent air as he fell forward. Despite this the man wasted no time crawling towards his weapon and retrieved it. As he turned around he began swinging his arms back and forth wildly, unsure of where the creature was. Zach realized that he too could no longer find the creature and began fearing for his life. That's when he noticed the snow near the man was moving just like dirt would do when a mole was digging its way through while near the surface. Zach yelled at the man to turn around to no avail. The creature sprouted from the ground like a Jack-in-the-box and with appendages unidentifiable to Zach tore the man completely in half. The man looked like he was about to scream as the creature smashed his head into the ground with enough force to splatter it everywhere like a watermelon despite there being at least half a foot of snow between them and solid ground. Zach tried to shut his eyes and unsee what just happened but there was suddenly another red flash of light, this one more intense than any of the other previous flashes. Suddenly he was in some kind of metal facility, though this one human, and appeared to be in a large mess hall. Red and white lights flashed above as a voice boomed "UNIDENTIFIED PATHOGEN DETECTED. QUARANTINE LOCKDOWN HAS BEEN INITIATED. PLEASE REPORT TO YOUR ASSIGNED STATIONS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS." Between the flashes of red and white light Zach managed to make out several human bodies strewn across the mess hell, most of which were in pieces and pooling blood. There were a group of survivors huddled in a corner, almost completely surrounded by upturned tables. What was odd though was that there were only a few tables in front of them and most of the tables had been placed behind them and had been stacked and welded not only together, but to the wall as well. Surely there was no threat from behind them as there should only be walls and possibly air vents. The men were shouting at each other but Zach couldn't make out what they were saying over the extremely loud announcement that kept repeating. They were all wielding guns and were moving them from section to section of their view like trained soldiers. Suddenly a pair of figures emerged from out of the shadows of the room. Zach wasn't sure where they came from or what they were, but they appeared to be mostly human in shape with the main difference being they had long, slender, almost scythe-like arms. The men opened fire and the creatures charged towards them in response. The creatures seemed completely unfazed by the bullets as each one hit their mark. One of them had their kneecap completely torn off and the other didn't stop for a moment. Zach started to follow the one still charging when he noticed that the one that just lost a leg was still continuing almost as far as the other one. The one still charging them lost an arm and suddenly the arm was frozen in air and pulled toward the men and just as suddenly it was shot back at the creature. Zach realized these men must be armed with Kinesis modules or at least one of them was. One of the men fired off a blast of Stasis at the one the other with Kinesis just impaled to the wall and this baffled Zach as they still had a creature coming. At this point one of them charged forward with what appeared to be an extremely old model of a plasma saw and sliced the crawling creatures arms off one by one and then sliced off its head. Much to Zach's surprise the creature was still coming towards them using its one good leg. The soldier proceeded to saw through this leg as well and then saw its torso and limbs in two and it seemed like the creature stopped moving after that. The solider continued forward now towards the one impaled on the wall and motioned back towards his group and another blast of Stasis hit the creature. He walked forward and started slicing the creature up just like he did the other when suddenly something flashed from the vent and pulled him into it. The group of men opened fire on the vent but it was too late to save their friend or whatever he was to them. Two of the remaining five men walked forward to check out the vent when suddenly a creature dropped on them from above. This creature was extremely different than the other two. Whereas the last ones were fairly humanoid, this one had two front legs of some kind and a very large tail. The creature managed to kill one of the men before the one with Kinesis grabbed a table and launched it at it. He managed to knock the creature away and narrowly miss their comrade but this didn't seem to faze the creature. They opened fire on it as the man tried to retreat to the group but the creature leaped and was suddenly on top of him. As he struggled to keep the creature from biting his head off the other men shot its arms off. The man pushed the creature off of himself before grabbing its tail and stomping its head off in a motion that almost seemed reminiscent of starting an old school lawnmower or generator. The man let go of the creature then and turned around to head back towards his group when suddenly the creature's tail shot out and burst through his stomach. Even through the constant booming announcement Zach could hear his scream. One of the men rushed over and grabbed the tail and slashed through it with what appeared to be some form of bayonet on his gun while another shot the creature's body away with Kinesis. They tried to administer a MedPack but as Zach could clearly tell from his RIG he was already dead. Just as Zach thought things couldn't get any worse for them a number of creatures burst through their barricade against the wall, pouring in from the air vents that they had desperately tried to seal. One of the men tried to grab a table with Kinesis to launch at them and give them a moment to regroup but he was swarmed immediately by tiny almost crab-like creatures from the ground. Zach watched as these tiny creatures pulled chunk after chunk of flesh from his body and then proceeded to burrow inside him. The last remaining men barely had time to scream before they were swarmed by the various other creatures. Zach had no idea what was going on anymore. What was originally one creature turned into a mass of at least seven different types of this creature. Suddenly they all turned towards Zach and before he could even try to run he felt a piercing pain through his head and he was dead. Or so he thought as Zach suddenly shot up in bed, heart pounding and completely covered in sweat. He commanded the room to turn his lights on and the light burned. After a moment though his eyes adjust and he realized he was still in his room on Aegis VII. He quickly ran a scan of his vitals and noticed that his heartrate had skyrocketed to 213 bpm. He pushed the button to call for medical help immediately and it wasn't long before a couple nurses arrived with a stretcher. On the way to MedBay he was given a small sedative to slow his heartrate but nothing large enough to knock him out. He was asked the standard questions on the way there like what his name was and where he was. "Well, what seems to be the problem son? This is an absurdly high heartrate your RIG has recorded, even for deep space anxiety." The doctor loomed over him, glancing him over and looking at him like he was some kind of anatomical anomaly that he had never seen before. Zach couldn't blame him though, he was right. This kind of heartrate was unheard of and was extremely rare even in deep space. Zach began telling him about the dream from beginning to end and didn't leave out any of the horrifying details. "Well son that's mighty fucked up if you ask me but that would certainly explain your heartrate. Do you think you could do me a favor?" the doctor asked him and he nodded weakly in return. "Alright son what I'm gonna have you do is try and draw some things for me. I know you've told me about these things in detail, but if you would kindly try and draw out some of the things you saw. These monoliths, maybe one of the creatures, one of the metal buildings you saw. Things like that that may help us identify the things you actually saw in your dream." "Uh, I'm not exactly a good artist but yeah, sure." Zach replied and was handed a few sheets of blank scrap paper and a pencil. It was odd that he wasn't given a tablet to draw it on digitally but it didn't really matter to him, it wouldn't look better on one compared to the other. Zach began with the monolith as it was one of the things he saw the most and could draw in extensive detail. After drawing the monolith he decided to scribble down a few of the symbols he remembered seeing on them as well. Afterwards he moved on to the metal buildings but there wasn't really anything special or noticeable about them. Zach did his best to draw the markings he saw though as well as include the letters S.C. and have the rest hidden by what he considered to be a snowstorm. He also decided to include the arena and it was here he also decided to go back to his drawing of the monolith and try and draw the platforms that they were on. Drawing the creatures was the hardest part. Not that they were hard to remember no, they were fairly humanoid and had scythe-like hands, seemed to have some arms coming out of their abdomen, and almost seemed like one of their legs had two sets of feet. No, no this was all very easy to remember but it was so easy to remember because of the horrific things that had just been seared into his head. Zach gave them all a once over and cleaned up a few details before handing them back to the doctor. After a few minutes of switching between silence, the doctor making "hmm" noises, and scribbling down some notes or looking at things on his tablet he spoke to Zach. "Now son I don't mean to alarm you, but this monolith you have drawn is exactly what was discovered last night. Now I know there's no way you know about it because I know who found it and that information has not been made public yet. This is what we know as a Marker. I won't go into detail about it too much as you will be getting debriefed on it later, but basically it boils down to this. We have no idea where it came from, but it is most certainly alien. On top of that, there are two 'sides' to the whole Marker thing. EarthGov sees it as a source of power or a weapon whereas some others have built a religion around it called Unitology and seem to think its the key to humanity's survival and evolution. As for the other drawings I can't say that I recognize them in the slightest nor could I find anything about or resembling them in any logs that I have available to me." Zach sat in silence unsure as of how to respond. He sat there for so long that the doctor wrote him a prescription for some medicine and then sent him off. As he left he noticed that doctor immediately went into some kind of call. He didn't think much of it and went and got his medicine and then headed to the mess hall for some food and water hoping it would help clear his mind and make him feel better. About halfway through his meal his RIG gave him an important notice. He opened it up and he noticed it was addressed to just about everybody on Aegis VII. Not just a certain type of job or a certain colony, no the entire god damn population currently on Aegis VII as well as a few people that he didn't recognize and who must be off-planet.